The notion of improving employee productivity and satisfaction through increased work autonomy has led to a variety of managerial practices that seek to enhance employees' sense of control over their work and workplace. One such organizational intervention which has gained currency last decade is empowerment. This thesis is an attempt clearly explicate the precise nature of the empowerment construct through theoretical analysis and empirical investigation. / An analysis of the construct of power from a psychological perspective yielded three dimensions of power: power as perceived control, power as perceived competence and power as being energized toward valued goals. Based on this analysis and a review of existing literature on empowerment, the empowered state was defined as a cognitive state perceived control, perceived competence and goal internalization. Building on this definition, a number of antecedents and of empowerment were examined leading to theoretical propositions and testable hypotheses. / The empirical test of the proposed theoretical framework was carried out in two stages. Phase I was devoted to the development of a psychometrically sound measure of empowerment. Phase II was concerned with construct validation through the testing of hypotheses relating the empowerment construct to other established constructs. / The empirical results supported the view that empowerment is a construct conceptually distinct from other constructs such as delegation, self-efficacy and intrinsic task motivation. The proposed multi-dimensional nature of empowerment was also strongly supported. In addition, organizational and job level context factors as well as select managerial behaviors were identified as possibile antecedents of empowerment. Empowerment was also found to be significantly related to a number of outcome variables including job satisfaction, job involvement and organizational commitment. The thesis concludes with implications for managerial practices and suggestions for future research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.29088 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Menon, Sanjay T. |
| Contributors | Kanungo, R. N . (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Faculty of Management.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001480118, proquestno: NN08135, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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